Mary O'Leary

Bio

Mary O’Leary is a film and installation artist based in Cork, Ireland. She graduated from MTU Crawford College of Art and Design with a BA in Fine Art in 2023 and completed an MA in Film and Screen Media at University College Cork in 2025. Her interdisciplinary practice explores the complexities of human experience through moving image and installation, with a particular interest in identity, perception, vulnerability, and the psychological effects of the uncanny.

O’Leary’s work combines personal experience with broader societal themes, exploring the ways external expectations can become internalised and influence how we perceive ourselves and others. Through film, sound, and physical installation, she creates immersive and often unsettling environments that encourage audiences to question their own perceptions and experiences.

Her practice is rooted in experimentation and an ongoing exploration of visual language, narrative structure, and the relationship between the body, identity, and lived experience. O’Leary is interested in creating encounters that extend beyond the immediate viewing experience, leaving space for ambiguity, reflection, and dialogue. Through her work, she seeks to create moments of curiosity, recognition, and emotional connection that can resonate beyond language and cultural boundaries.

Artist Statement

Through film and installation, O’Leary explores the complexities of human experience, often examining the relationship between internal emotion and the external pressures that shape how we perceive ourselves and others. Her work draws from personal experience and broader societal themes, using an uncanny and sometimes unsettling perspective to explore identity, mental health, and the expectations placed upon the individual.

O’Leary is interested in the space between the familiar and unfamiliar, using moving image, sound, objects, and installation to create immersive encounters that encourage viewers to question their own perceptions. Her work often transforms personal experiences into visual narratives, allowing feelings that can be difficult to articulate to take physical and psychological form.

Central to her practice is an interest in the ways societal expectations become internalised, influencing behaviour, self-worth, identity, and our understanding of the self. By bringing these often invisible pressures into view, O’Leary creates work that confronts the tension between vulnerability and the need to appear composed.

The uncanny is used as a means of disrupting passive viewing and creating a sense of unease, curiosity, or introspection. Rather than offering a fixed interpretation, O’Leary invites audiences to bring their own experiences to the work, creating space for reflection and personal connection. Through these encounters, she seeks to explore how individual experiences can become shared, and how film and installation can create moments of empathy, recognition, and understanding beyond language.